Mind, Brain and Planet

S2 EP1: Melting glaciers and our adversity to ambiguity

• Paul Howard-Jones

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Climate change is melting our glaciers at an alarming rate, dramatically changing landscapes. That might suggest visitors to popular glacier sites would leave with better environmental intentions. Paul visits the Rhône Glacier in Switzerland and discovers not everyone is making the connection. Does our adversity to ambiguity help us avoid connecting glacial melting with our personal lifestyle? 



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PHJ (00:03): Hello and welcome to season two, and in the first episode today we'll be traveling to Switzerland to venture inside a melting g glacier. But to start with, I'm inside a polytunnel just outside Bristol because I do like discovering the different ways in which people connect to their planet. And here's someone I want to ask about that.

Alison (00:38): Hello, I'm Alison, and I am the co-owner of a business called Fish Ponds Flowers, and we are a micro flower farm and floristry business.

PHJ (00:47): What is it about what you do that helps you connect to the planet?

Alison (00:52): Over the years we've done this business, we really find that we connect very deeply actually to the seasons -  understanding what grows when, what grows best, and when things actually go wrong. And we expect things to be growing at certain times and they don't. So we pay actually a lot of attention, I suppose on an annual basis, on a seasonal basis and on a daily basis, to how and what is growing in our field. We spend a lot of time thinking probably of our flowers as our little children, and how can we make sure that they are growing the best they can and are they going to be in bloom at that time? Although, I have to say that's coupled with a lot of what we do along the lines of education. So if, if somebody wants to connect with us and wants to get wedding flowers, what we'll say is: “I will give you the best of what I have on the field, and it will be the freshest flower you can have because I will cut it the day before your wedding. But I can't guarantee exactly what it will be.” Yeah, and there are some things you can't have - you can't have tulips in August. You can't have peonies in September. But that is, actually, I think, the wonder of this is that some things are worth waiting for and it connects you to the provenance, to the locality - to what it is that you can have in a place.

PHJ (02:13): Which isn't always everything you want.

Alison (02:15): No, it's not, but actually it will give you something else. And it will give you the most beautiful thing you can have on that day from four miles away.

PHJ (02:25): The flowers are, are very, very beautiful. So thank you for letting me in your polytunnel to, to look at them.

Alison (02:32): It's a pleasure.

PHJ (02:38): Switzerland is a country where global warming is visibly and dramatically impacting on the landscape. I've come here because I'm interested to know how the experience of seeing these changes is affecting the tourists who flock to Switzerland Every year. I've just arrived at Zurich Station after an 11 hour train ride from Bristol but tomorrow, after a bit of rest, I'm off to see what's left of the Rone Glacier, the source of the river Rone in Switzerland, and a very prominent example of glacial retreat. 

PHJ: So here I am at the little shop that sells tickets to an ice tunnel that's being carved into part of the glacier, allowing you to go inside it. One or two decades ago, I would already be able to see the glacier from here pouring down through the mountains like some ginormous frozen flood of ice. But it's been retreating at over 30 meters a year in the last couple of decades. And now I have to walk 10 minutes to see it. Well, I mustn't forget to buy a ticket as well.

PHJ (03:51): I'd like to visit the ice cave, please. How much is it?

Ticket seller: (03:54): Nine francs please

PHJ (04:00): And do I just walk along there?

Ticket seller: (04:02): You just walk to the flat and then you go down. Okay. You get,

PHJ (04:06): And the tunnel is actually in inside the glass. Is is it a little further away now than it used to be?

Ticket seller: (04:11): It is. Every year it gets further. Okay. Thank you. 

PHJ (04:23): I'm really interested to know how seeing changes due to global warming wrought on such a vast large scale will be impacting on visitors. And that includes me, of course. At the moment I feel rather odd about it. I'm actually quite excited by the idea of coming here and I'm really looking forward to seeing the glacier close up - which almost seems wrong because I know its state is symptomatic of a disrupted climate, a climate that's been helping us to stay safe and fed for thousands of years. So this shrinkage is really not a good thing. The last time this Glacier advanced was a few hundred years ago during the so-called Little Ice Age (although that wasn't a true global ice age). It's now the smallest that it's been for five, 7,000 years and very rapidly retreating further. In fact, Switzerland has lost a quarter of its glacial volume in the last 10 years alone. And we've just had another super hot June here, the second warmest on record.

PHJ (05:16): But it's still here. A huge frozen bulk of ice, perhaps darker than you might think due to the soot dust and algae that gets revealed as it melts. Certainly not the brilliant white that you might expect. And that dark color, of course, accelerates the rate of melting further since it absorbs rather than reflects the heat energy from the sun. I'm just gonna go down to where part of the glacier has been tunneled and where I can see some tourists walking into the glacier.

PHJ (06:06): And there is a tear in the sheets. I'm just gonna open the sheets and see what's underneath.

PHJ (06:14): Right, okay. It is much colder in here now. Of course it is outside. I'm just, it feels like I'm, it looks like I'm standing in a huge block of ice. You can hear it melting. I'm beginning to worry now that my microphone's gonna get wet. I hadn't thought about that. The amount of water that's coming off the walls is quite incredible.

PHJ (06:41): Every now and then, you hit what feels like a running tap and these scaffolding boards have been placed down for the tourist to walk on and you just find yourself a few meters in and there it stops. And every year they have to carve it out again into a shape that's appropriate for the tourist to walk through so they can have this experience of being inside the glacier. And already I can see there's actually a hole in the ice that they're plugged up with a big blanket just to try to keep the ice cave going until the end of the season when presumably they'll have to start thinking about where they're gonna carve it again

PHJ (07:40): Outside, it's really the sheer immensity of the glacier that fills you with a sense of awe, as do the mountains that cradle it, that feeling that the forces of nature are so much greater than oneself. But unlike the mountains, this feature of the landscape is changing. The loss of this glacier is threatening to deprive people and animals of an important source of fresh water. It will drive away the birds and the plants that thrive on it. And of course, I know the melting of glacier is contributing to sea rise as well. So surely this must be one of the most unmissable symbols in Europe of how we are destabilizing our climate. It's a massive signal for urgent action, isn't it? Well, let's see how other people feel.

Tamara (08:26): Tamara, I am from Freeburg in Switzerland.

PHJ (08:32): Why have you come here today?

Tamara  (08:34): It's interesting. We would like to see once this glacier. I think if even if we wouldn't have climate change, the glacier  would also disappear. Okay. Not as fast as it does, but it would still disappear.

Martin (08:56): Martin from Selby, North Yorkshire.

PHJ (09:00): And why have you come here today, Martin?

Martin (09:02): To drive the good roads. I've driven up in my Porsche and come to enjoy the roads and the views. 

PHJ (09:10): So you're aware probably that the glacier is retreating. Does that worry you at all?

Martin (09:15): It's worrying and it's sad, but I dunno what we can do about it. Yeah. It's a, a joint global effort it to prevent global warming. And it's everybody's got their own, you know, needs and wants for travel and electricity and so on. 

Speaker 8 (09:37): I'm Agnieszka. I'm from England.

PHJ (09:39): How do you feel when you see the glacier?

Agnieszka (09:42): I didn't expect something like that. It's absolutely amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

PHJ (09:47): So do you think when people come here and they see the glacier, do you think that actually affects the way they think about the environment at all? Do you think it makes them think about climate change or…?

Agnieszka (09:57): I think it's just it's just the nature. It's how it needs to be. Years ago it was different. Now it's different. Maybe after 100 years it'll be again like it was before. You never know. So I think it's just a nature thing and we just need to leave it for nature.

PHJ (10:16): Hmm. Okay. So those responses aren't quite what I expected. So what's going on here? To my mind, the seeds of ambiguity have been at work. Let's just look at each of these issues. In turn, Tamara said it's gonna melt anyway. Well, yes, on average the glacier has been melting over the last few thousand years, but nothing like the speed it is now with the possibility of all glaciers disappearing from Europe by the end of this century. The Rhone Glacier hasn't been this size since around the dawn of civilization in Europe, which perhaps should remind us of how civilization depends on climate and Martin's idea is that there's nothing to be done. People will always want their energy. The seed of ambiguity here is that each of us knows we can't solve the global climate crisis on our own. But throughout the history of civilization, we've had to learn to work together at increasing scale. We've gone from small hunter gatherer tribes to urban and then national populations by learning to communicate common goals across ever larger populations. The idea of working together globally is daunting, but whoever we are, each of us also has a potential individual role to play in adopting the attitudes and behaviors needed for success. Everyone can be doing something more. Agnieszka said it was just nature. It melted before and came back. Maybe that will happen again. Well, I might have planted this seed of ambiguity in your mind earlier in this episode, so let me try to dispel it now. Do you remember I referred to the little ice age in Europe a few hundred years ago when yeah, for a while the Rhone Glacier advanced. But I also tried to make the point that this so-called Little Ice Age wasn't a global ice age. It was more of a local event, unlike the global temperature change, which is what's mostly driving the glacial shrinkage now. To be clear, there's no chance of an ice age appearing on the horizon to bring back the world's glacier once they've gone. But the trouble is that these seeds of ambiguity can impact us in ways that far outweigh their basis in any fact. Some politicians even appear to have recognized their power and appear to be purposely sewing ambiguity when arguing we don't need to worry about inconvenient change for the sake of the environment. And that's proving an attractive idea for many voters. So why is ambiguity so toxic to rational thinking?

PHJ (12:52): Much of what we know about how the brain deals with the unknowns in life comes from experiments around betting with money. These experiments reveal a difference in our response to uncertainty (where we have some awareness of the probabilities involved) and ambiguity (where we know little about the chances of being right or wrong). Uncertainty in many situations (like spinning a wheel of fortune and other games of chance where we can see the odds) actually increases reward signals in our brain. We want to engage more. But we do like to have a rough idea of the odds. And that's true even if the odds can't help us win. This is called the Ellsberg paradox. Ellsberg asked people to play one of two games in the first They had to guess whether the color of a ball was red or black, drawn from a mixture containing an equal number of both types - so 50:50 odds. Or, they could guess the color drawn from an unknown mixture of red and black balls. The chances of a win based on what's known are essentially the same. Yet, people preferred the first situation, the less ambiguous one. We have ambiguity aversion and when, in 2005, scientists in California looked at the brain's response to ambiguity, they found activation in the amygdala - often associated with fear and anxiety. When the unknowns involve disagreement rather than just lack of information, scientists have found that we respond with an even stronger aversive response. And an aversive response makes us want to look away to move on, disengage and ignore.

PHJ (14:40): Now, I don't want to give you the impression that everyone I met at the Glacier was unmoved by what they saw. As I was leaving, I met Hans Peter who was standing a few feet away from the ice tunnel and looking rather thoughtful. Hans had spent some happy days here as a student studying the glacier in the seventies. He was therefore able to notice some really big changes and so he didn't need convincing of their seriousness or that these were being caused by human activity. For him it was a triste picture, a sad picture. But did he think visiting here could encourage others to think more about the environment?

Hans (15:16): I am Hans Peter and I live at the lake of Constance. For me, it's a very triste picture because 45 years ago, we have about 150 meters more ice above us,

PHJ (15:34): Right. 'cause We are standing on no ice at the moment.

Hans (15:37): Yes. So it is, yeah. And the lake it becomes from year to year greater. Yeah.

PHJ (15:43): Do you think people leave here with better environmental intentions, thinking about how to live more sustainably as a result of seeing climate change happening so dramatically?

Hans (15:57): Oh, I think a lot of people they see this glacier. And I think there are a lot of people, they see some such thing for your first time, right? And if they can make connections - how it has been for about 50 years ago, 100 years ago….? I think it's very easy to come to the glacier and see the rest of the glacier. And I think the people enjoy to see this. But yes, if they make this own reflections: “what can I do myself?” Yes. I think that's rather difficult.

PHJ (16:45): Yes. Reflecting and connecting can be difficult and perhaps it's a lot to expect your average tourist to connect what they see here with their own behaviors. But that raises the question of what so-called last chance tourism is really about. Can it be prompted by genuine concern for the environment, perhaps even shift people's attitudes in a more pro-environmental direction? Or is it just a selfish desire to tick a box on an increasingly exclusive bucket list? In the next episode, we'll be staying in Switzerland to meet Dr. Emmanuel Salim, who's been studying Last Chance Tourism - as we try to get to the bottom of these and other questions about the connection between mind, brain, and planet.